Albums you are truly obsessed with!

Based on repeat plays for 2017

Pink Floyd - Animals
Rush - Fly By Night
Joe Jackson - I'm The Man
QOTSA - Villains
Queen - A Day At The Races

 

Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus

If you're going to have an obsession, it might as well be about one of the greatest jazz albums ever made.

It's almost embarrassing how much this record gets played at my house. Movies have title tracks. My home has a title album.

 

Why did you not mention location of recording of your Dick's Picks choice? Important part of that series - Making us have to look it up, if we cared to. Oh by the way, it was not released in'95 it's February 23, 1996 release date. Just because you are old and retired does not mean you get off too easy with your rock & roll facts.

 

MAYHEM - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas
LE ROUX - So Fired Up
KRAFTWERK - Die Mensch-Maschine
TORMENTOR - The 7th Day Of Doom (Demo)
EMPEROR - As The Shadows Rise (7" EP)
ANNIHILATOR - Alice In Hell
BATHORY - Under The Sign Of The Black Mark
SLAYER - Haunting The Chapel
PINK FLOYD - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
I-TEN - Taking A Cold Look

...and so many more...

 

Any Yardbirds would make the list. (except , maybe, my bootleg, "Last Rave Up in L.A." 3 record box set, only 1500 made.) Worlds worst recording.
The 1964 "5 Live Yardbirds" is still the best live album ever, so raw and , well, live.

 

I guess the main ones for me are
Forever Changes
The Doors-The Doors
Rubber Soul
Rush- Permanent Waves
Gilded Palace of Sin


Some odd ones would be
Poco -Cantamos
Outlaws-Outlaws
Bobby Fuller Four-I Fought The Law -Many great album cuts

 

Right then.Dicks Picks Vol.4-Fillmore East 2/13&14/70.But my tapes are complete shows.Peace.

 

Thin Lizzy -- Renegade
The Who -- Who's Next
Rush ------- Signals
Nick Drake --- Pink Moon
Allman Brothers -- Eat A Peach
Chameleons ---- Script of the Bridge

---- have listened to each (or at least several songs from each) on a weekly basis for several years now.

 

Truly obsessed with!

Azymuth: Telecommunications, Light as a Feather, Outburo, Cascades
Donald Fagan: The Nightfly
Pink Floyd: Meddle
King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King.

 

Here's where I first encountered Crimson King.

 

Big obsession ?

Nick Drake, easily.

 

Every so often I come across an album I end up thoroughly obsessed with. Most recently it's been this one:

Recorded in 2006, and released on the Rough Trade label in the UK (Nonesuch in the US). Though issued under the Scritti Politti name, this is more or less purely Green Gartside, a few touches here and there aside, and it's a striking beauty. First few listens, a few songs jumped out, but most didn't immediately grab me. But 2 or 3 listens later, I was completely gobsmacked. This is something like a masterpiece, really folks. All due respect to CUPID & PSYCHE '85, the best known Scritti and admittedly a gem (I wore out a vinyl copy back in the day), this is even better, in fact light years ahead. That's what 20 years of getting punched around a bit by life and maturing will do for a man, I guess. And yet almost unbelievably, the famous Gartside voice - described back in the day by a DJ in my hometown of San Jose as "disembodied Michael Jackson" - remains as unsullied and pure as it was back in 1985, despite some hard living periods, a miracle of sorts.

The old '80s pop feel infuses this music, the reggae and hip hop beats that Gartside has woven in through the years there as well, but now the approach is mostly soft, understated - and there are now other elements - softly strummed acoustic guitars, idiosyncratic chord changes worthy of Bachrach, sudden changes in tempo and key that make perfect sense in retrospect, and most unexpected but completely logical when you hear it, a very strong Beach Boys vibe in the harmonies, and specifically a Brian Wilson kind of insularity to the whole enterprise. Listening to music this intimate, this personal, it's like you've got a wire directly into the artist's brain as they putter in the home studio (which is essentially what Gartside did, playing most of the instruments and layering on most if not all of the harmonies himself). It all sounds so fluid and effortless in the end, and yet you know it took a lot of sweat. Most artists would kill to write a couple of tracks in their lifetimes that are as good as several of the tracks here ("The Boom Boom Bap," ""Fine Lines," "Snow in Sun," "Cooking," "Dr. Abernathy," hell they're almost all great) and it's refreshing to hear Gartside's prodigious songwriting gift being allowed to carry the day, front and center, sparing the (at the time of CUPID & PSYCHE '85 all the rage but now dated) Arif Mardin-type big production layers.

The lyrics remain as literate and at times obtuse as ever, but even there maturity has set in. You're not always sure what the words are supposed to "mean," but they always now come across as personal and deeply important to the narrator, sometimes rather urgently so. Largely banished is the showy and distant academia Gartside sometimes used to favor, particularly in the pre-CUPID era.

If that all sounds like one hell of a confusing description, well I admit it probably is, because it is hard to find words adequate to describe this album. I'm not even going to try to take on describing individual tracks. You just have to hear this music, ideally as a complete entity, start to finish. Beyond category, resolutely unfashionable and yet oozing with class and style, and utterly essential. I seldom play any disc more than a few times in one stretch, and this one I've played all the way through at least a dozen times over the past several weeks, and it still isn't getting old.

 

The Doors s/t has been numero uno since 1967 & still play it at least twice a week

A wide variety of Grateful Dead

A wide variety of Ray Charles music

A wide variety of Buddy Holly music

The Many New Sides of Charlie Rich

Ike Turners Kings of Rhythm I'm Tore Up

Pere Ubu Raygun Suitcase
Pere Ubu Pennsylvania
Pere Ubu Story Of My Life
Pere Ubu TMD
David Thomas & two pale boys - Meadville
David Thomas & two pale boys- Surfs Up

Sly & Family Stone Greatest Hits

Marvin Gaye Super Hits

Stones Let It Bleed

Beatles RS (US edition)
Beatles AHDN
Meet the Beatles

Dave Mason Alone Together

Dylan s/t (1962)

Roxy Music For Your Pleasure
Roxy Music Stranded

Velvets WLWH
Lou Reed The Blue Mask
Lou Reed Ecstasy

Otis Redding - Dictionary of Soul

Rod Stewart - EPTAS

These records continue to see a lot of TT time around my home...

Maybe not every week but every two weeks for sure these records are played ( at least a certain side)

 

I no longer stand behind my remarks above. I found an early CD of It’s Better To Travel, and after some repeated listening I’m really starting to love it.

 

I wonder if you had a compressed-to-hell remaster from the 21st century? That would put anybody off of any album...

 

Foo Fighters - There Is Nothing Left to Lose

Megadeth - So Far So Good So What

Paul McCartney - Chaos and Creation

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

 

Still this...

 

The only holes are the bullet holes in the mirrors.

 

Something about Ghost In The Machine by The Police has haunted me since 1985 when a friend lent me a copy when I was 15. Since then, I've owned it on both vinyl and CD, have listened to it repeatedly several times in a row, and have let it sit for years without hearing it. Yet, there's still something "about" it I've never quite figured out. Brilliant music, regardless...

 

Not sure about weekly, as I tend to spend more time writing, rehearsing, and recording music than listening to records .. that said, I will say that as close to obsession as life allows, The Oscar Peterson Trio's "Walking The Line" LP from 1970 sure is one I listen to a lot more than scores of others. Similar with the three Buffalo Springfield albums; Spirit's "Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus"; The Hollies' "Distant Light"; Pretty Things' "S F. Sorrow" ; Billie Holiday .. any of her 1950s LPs.

 

I think I listened on Apple Music back then, although it’s not in the catalogue anymore. Or maybe it was YouTube. But I agree it must have been the mastering. The CD I currently have still sounds a bit more 80’s than Kaleidoscope World, but not harsh in any way.

 

I see some great albums listed. These are my favorites.

1. Ten Years After - A Space In Time
2. Jimi Hendrix - Are You Experienced
3. JJ Cale - Naturally
4. War - The World Is A Ghetto
5. The Doors - Waiting For The Sun

 

Family - A Song For Me

I found this record over the summer and if it isn't getting repeated plays on the turntable I can have any number of the tracks playing in my mind at any given time. Now to find the UK edition with a different running order!

 

Kirsty MacColl - Kite
Everything But The Girl - Love Not Money
Prefab Sprout - Jordan the Comeback
Joni Mitchell - Hissing of Summer Lawns
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville
Kate Bush - The Sensual World*

Those are ones that are always in the mix.

*Hounds of Love is a masterpiece - and has a lot of meaning for me - but it can be very heavy listening - so I kind of save that for quiet listening.